


What Is This Thing?

by wisdomeagle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Late Night Conversations, Post-Chosen, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-20
Updated: 2005-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:37:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4704683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things they keep inside; this is the night when darkness clears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is This Thing?

**Author's Note:**

> For invisionary who requested the lyrics that comprise the epigraph and W/X, one or two years post-"Chosen," in my [Chinese take-out menu fic-on-demand](http://www.livejournal.com/users/wisdomeagle/506569.html).

> What is this thing you keep inside  
> Out of the light and wrapped in pride  
> Always afraid that one day it will show - Trans-Siberian Orchestra "I'll Keep Your Secrets"

Grief isn't pretty, or gentle, or a flower, or a raindrop, or -- Willow tosses the book on the floor. _Or what?_ Or anything that disappears. Grief doesn't melt, or fade, or slink into the background. Grief burns. Grief _burns_ , but no one knows it. Why is everyone walking around the flat on tiptoe, pretending that grief is anything but fire, eating them up from the inside?

There's Buffy, wearing her dancing shoes, smiling as brightly as she can. The Immortal's dust, but there's another vampire waiting for her at the discothèque. She blows kisses through the hallway, and Willow can see them, if she forgets to shield herself, bright and incandescent as soap bubbles, landing gently on Giles's head, on Xander's. She reaches up absentmindedly to block the one aimed at her.

"I'll be back later!" Buffy calls, but no one replies. Later could mean daybreak, if Buffy stays alive that long. No one will wait up for her; it doesn't matter where she's going.

There's Giles. Giles isn't grieving; Giles is pretending. He offered to rent them all their own flats, but somehow, that seems even wronger, so they live here in his, she and Buffy sharing one bedroom, Giles and Xander in the other, even though with her being very much with the gay, there's no real reason for them to split up boys-girls, except tradition. Tradition is important now. It's all they have left.

"I'm turning in for the night." It's early, only half-past nine, but Giles is getting older (at least, that's one of the things he pretends) and doesn't want to stay awake when the rest of them are grieving.

Xander acknowledges this with a gruff grunt, and then there are just the two of them. Xander, grieving, and Willow, also grieving. (Plus gay, of course. Very gay.)

"So, Will. When are you going to bed?"

"I'm reading," she says. Xander stares at the book she tossed aside five minutes ago. "Okay, I was reading."

"The Witch's Heart: A Guide To Healing? What happened to 'I'm very over Tara'?"

"Well, I was wrong," she says, a little more defensively than she means to. "Grief doesn't just go away, you know."

"I know." Xander's voice is always quiet when he talks about Anya, which is funny, because Anya was the loudest person Willow's ever known.

"Tara always wanted to visit England," Willow says, after a decent interval. "She loved snow. I wish we'd had snow in Sunnydale for me to show her -- it seems like there's so much she never got to see."

"Like Sunnydale falling into a hole. That was pretty wild, all right."

"I'm _thinking_ ," she says, frowning. "Remembering."

"It's funny," Xander says, but he's not really talking to her. "I try to imagine Anya in high school, in the library with us, and even though she was there a couple times, it's like she -- wouldn't fit. No space for her."

"Tara would fit anywhere."

"I know. She was flexible. Way more bendable than Anya."

"I dunno, from the way she talked, you and Anya got pretty bendy, yourselves." Xander laughs, and, encouraged, Willow continues, "Not that Tara and I didn't, well, _bend_."

Xander has been sitting on the floor all evening, but now, after reaching to retrieve Willow's book, he pulls himself onto the couch. "You want to talk about it?"

"We're talking," she tells him. "This thing, where we open our mouths? Talking. Definitely talking."

"What was it like?" he asks, looking elsewhere. "When you fell in love?"

Her heart beats too fast for someone who's been out for five years. "It was -- magical. That's silly, right? But it's how it felt. Sort of like... like in the whole world, there wasn't anyone but her, and me, and like everything I saw was the same color as her eyes, and..." Xander puts a hand on her shoulder. "That first summer we were together, when it was the six of us, you and me and Anya and Tara and Buffy and Riley -- I felt so good. So _alive_."

"I know. I kind of felt the same way, I guess."

"Really?"

"Well, except that I was still living with my parents, and still not really sure about the whole Anya thing."

"What do you mean?" She curls a little closer to him, careful not to look him in the eye.

"It was... complicated, with Anya. It's always complicated, I guess, but me and Anya were extra-complicated with a side of confusing. Especially then."

"Tara and I never were."

"Except to the rest of us."

Willow laughs a little. "I guess I kind of forgot about everyone else -- and everything else. Except magic."

"For awhile there, I thought we'd lost you." 

She gulps. They've never talked about this. Ever. It's off-limits, secret stuff, hidden away and labeled do not touch. 

"I guess -- I guess stuff was different in Sunnydale. I never thought I'd say it, but... I kind of miss the place."

"Me too. I miss high school," she tells him.

"Okay, I wouldn't go that far."

She breathes again. This is lighter stuff, easier to deal with. "Well, the library, anyhow. I bet Giles misses the library too."

"I think Giles misses -- Willow, can I ask you a personal question?"

"Um, I guess. That's what we're doing anyhow, right?"

"You and Tara -- you guys -- you --"

"Xander?"

"You guys slept together, right? But you slept with Oz too. And I guess I'm kinda confused, because..." His words are all coming together too quickly; she can hardly make them out. Or maybe it's the thumping of his heart, now pressed too close to her ear, that makes it hard to hear. "I've just been wondering if you thought you might ever, you know, or if you're all -- that is to say, totally --"

"I'm gay, okay?" she snaps.

"Okay." He pulls away from her and she almost lands on his lap without his shoulder to support her. "That's all I wanted to know."

He starts reading her book, and she knows she's said something wrong because when Xander willingly opens a book that's not related to saving-the-world, it means things are bad and he doesn't want to talk. But she doesn't want to answer this question, doesn't even want to contemplate its answer, doesn't even want to begin to try to contemplate -- "Kennedy was a mistake," she says. "A really, really sexy mistake, but still -- wrong. She didn't understand us."

"Kennedy didn't understand...?"

"Us." She waves her left hand, the one not currently inches away from Xander's face, to indicate their apartment, Giles's scattered books, Buffy's lipstick-blotted tissues, the neatly stacked notes from school and Council that indicate her corner of the room. "She didn't get why I wanted to come back here."

Xander nods, slowly. "Why did you come back? At the risk of, you know, not getting it?"

"Because of you."

"Us, plural, right?"

"Yeah." She pretends she doesn't hear the implication in his question.

"Actually, honestly," she laughs a little, "I came back here so _I_ could understand. When you're in South America, enjoying the killer mosquitoes and the lesbian sex, it's hard to remember England."

"Or Sunnydale," Xander adds. "Same goes for Africa. Well, minus the lesbian sex."

"Xander, can I ask _you_ a personal question?"

"Of course. That's what I'm here for, having my personal life be comical for others' amusement."

She frowns. "I'm serious, Xander. This is important."

"All ears."

"You know how senior year, there was, well, you know, naughtiness?"

"Like I've stopped thinking about it."

"Well that's the thing. When did you stop, you know..."

"Loving you?"

"No! I mean -- okay, _loving_ me, if that's how you want to put it -- like, you know. Romantically."

Xander stares very hard at the stupid grief book. "I was, um... I loved Anya, you know that, right?"

"I know. But that's not about... you can love more than one person. When Oz came back, I knew that. Because I loved Oz and I loved Tara and right then, I loved Tara more, but if Oz came through the door right now, I don't know what I'd do."

"Even though you're gay?"

She sighs, digs herself deeper into the couch. "Would you accept 'mostly gay' as an answer?"

"At the moment, the acceptable answers are, and this is multiple choice so it should be easy: a) fuck me, Xander, harder, harder!, b) I've always loved you, Xander. Take me now! or c) all of the above."

She laughs. He's right. The mocking falsetto does make it easy to say, "I've been thinking about us for a long time."

"Since high school."

"Since way before then," she plunges on bravely. "Since, like, forever. I can't remember _not_ being in love with you."

"Oh."

Suddenly this is way too serious a conversation to be having sober. Like a mind-reader, Xander says, "Let's raid Giles's cabinet."

"Oh, yes please," she says.

With drinks firmly in hand and sitting as far away from each other as the tiny couch will allow, they both speak at once. "Okay, so about the gay thing," she says and he says, "You mentioned something about sex?"

"I did _not_." 

"What about the gay thing?"

"I'm not sure," she admits. "I kind of thought I'd be with Tara forever, and since Tara was, well, a girl, I didn't really think through the future possibilities of non-lesbian life. Does that make sense?"

"Total sense. It, um, still doesn't answer my question though."

"I know. I need -- I need to think about this."

Xander nods. "I guess, given high school, I can't exactly take the high moral ground with the knowing your own, uh, mind."

"Heart," Willow says, putting a hand over Xander's. "And no, you really can't. So don't even try, Mr. Moral Superiority."

"Would it be all right if I sort of walked around you in a manly fashion for the next couple of days? I could lift weights."

"Xander." She moves her hand to Xander's arm. "Gay here. I don't think convincing me of how masculine you are will help win me over."

"Good point, good point." Xander puts his hand over hers and looks thoughtful. "Think I ought to ask Buffy if I can borrow some of her lipstick?"

Willow wants to laugh, but Xander is seriously misunderstanding something here, and she wants to make sure he gets it before the evening's over. "Listen to me -- if I decide -- and I'm not saying -- but I probably -- if we're going to do this thing, it's not _because_ you're a guy. And it's not in spite of you being a guy, either. It's because, well, you're my Xander." She can't look at him any longer, not when that's on the table, so she's taken by surprised when she hears tears in his voice.

"Thanks, Will -- I mean -- thank you."

She smiles. "Goodnight, Xander. Sleep well."

"You can count on it."

She leaves him alone on the couch, clutching his drink too tightly, and tries to empty her mind for sleep.


End file.
